Headlight question

Does anyone know the height for the light cutoff? At what height it’s supposed to be, I put new bulbs in and I don’t want to blind people. I used tape to mark the stock and new bulb cut off and they’re the same but it feels a bit high to me, or is it because I can actually see where the light is being thrown with the new bulbs?

 

If you put LEDs in the halogen housing you’re going to blind people no matter what. You’d be better off going with a higher output halogen bulb that works with the headlight housing and projects light down the road properly.

 

To be honest, each vehicle would be different. After my lift I had to lower my lights to the road ahead would be lite up and I still used the regular halogen because I knew anything brighter would be too bright.

 

I replaced the H11 with H9, removing the green insert. The light against the wall looks like your picture, and no one flashes me because of extra brightness.

 

Just swapping bulbs isn’t going to change your cut off height or need adjustment, assuming you stayed halogen. This is how to properly aim headlights though
https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html

 

I put LEDs in, I had the Phillips ones for a while and they were good but they were discontinued and only lasted about a year, recently had the Sylviania ones but the brighter/ stronger the bulb, the less life span it has. Those lasted about 7 months and one bulb burnt out. These LEDs are nice and I know they’re bright, I just don’t want the main beam to hit people in the face

 

I would trust your tape measurements rather than your subjective perception.

There are also inspection procedures for headlight adjustment as well. It’s possible your headlights were not adjusted correctly prior to the bulb replacement. You shine your lights at a wall from X feet away and measure the x,y location of the center of the beam on the wall. The Proper location might vary dependent on bulb type.

 

You’re right. Also my truck is lifted, I found a video that showed how to aim the headlights correctly and it was easy to understand. Will try later

 

https://youtu.be/OIow5YgdRro?si=Jnz-ONmA36ZEKVKV
This is easy to understand if anyone else needs it

 

just so you know, you're going to keep repeating this replacement schedule. led as a technology fundamentally can't work in a halogen housing simply because there's not enough of a thermal pathway away from the proper filament location, so the led's are going to continue to keep cooking themselves.

 

I think if they last more than a year it’s ok, I got them on sale and it was basically the same price as brighter halogen bulbs. I got the auxito y13 and people comment they’ve had them 2 and even 3 years with no problems. It’s a 1:1 of how stock bulbs shoot

 

lifted? really? that should have been said at the first..........good luck

 

It's not that they are brighter it is that the source area is a larger cross section than a wound filament making them out of focus and throwing light were it is not supposed to go

 

And that they are pointing down onto vehicles at angles that the halogen housing needs special attention to redirect.

 

The problem with the LED replacements are that, up until this point in time, have the LED emitter elements that are both in the wrong place and are far too large to work properly in a halogen headlight assembly. Hold the original H11 and the LED replacement side by side. The size and placement of that halogen filament has to be that size, shape and position within something like a third of a millimeter to work as designed. There are no LED's that even come close to that. Sure, you could design one that was but the emitters would be so small that their output would never be up to the stock halogen. Maybe some day but not today.

As far as aiming the lights, that video was pretty bad with a shit-ton of extraneous crap in there that only confused the issue. And that that dude actually thought there were acceptable LED solutions for halogen assemblies kind of blows his credibility and then when he starts using whether you are illuminating the other driver's heads or faces as a criteria is just stupid.

If you're in a stock Tacoma (and we're in a Tacoma forum here) and never mind that your truck is lifted, if lower slung cars are very close to you they ARE going to be "under" the beam no matter what and that's just a fact. When I'm driving my 911, it's a different world than in my Tacoma.

There are better guides - look up Daniel Stern - hell, even shoot him an email. He's very personable and has always responded to me. The 2 inches below level at 25 feet is actually not written in stone and that below level number gradually does up as the centerline of your light goes up. Usually you'll see it written as 2-3 inches below level, 3-4 inches below level and so on. There is some wiggle room there, plus it's impossible to be that exact in your measurements.

The last thing I'm going to mention is that it's far far more difficult to find an appropriately level surface leading up to a wall to do a visual alignment. You really have to be on a perfectly flat, preferably poured concrete surface that is also perfectly level. Good fucking luck. Your lumpy driveway at home will not work adequately. You think it's flat and level but it's not and having one tire an inch higher and another half and inch lower will make it all a waste of time.

Finally, there ARE ways to visually judge your overall beam alignment when driving, especially when you're driving down a dark road with trees, bushes or other taller vegetation next to the right side of the road. You'll easily be able to see how the cutoff in your light is either parallel to the ground, tapers up or tapers down. The beam should be tapering down slightly, which is really easy to see.

Now trash those crappy, illegal and unsafe LED's and either put a high performance H11 or just do the popular and very inexpensive H9 bulb swap. If you really want LED's then pony up and get the OEM units. They are beyond fantastic and far better than anything you can put in the projector housings, and even more difficult to aim properly, but once you do you'll wonder why you waited so long.

 

This has been discussed ad nauseum.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-hid-vs-led-vs-halogen-h11-projector-headlights.589465/

Post #3 talks about LED's. There's really only three options available for replacement bulbs that are recommended that drop into the halogen housings and work decently, none of them are the Auxito's.

He talks about why you shouldn't use Auxito's in these posts:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...ctor-headlights.589465/page-102#post-22134916
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...ctor-headlights.589465/page-178#post-24447830

Putting the wrong lights in your truck may give you tons of foreground lighting and not the distance lighting that you need, which is not ideal, nor safe.

Like 99% of these posts go, I'm sure you'll just run those crap LED's anyways, because well, you already bought them after doing "research", but kudos to you for actually caring about potentially blinding other people, most people don't give a shit. The Phillips H9 bulbs are like $12 a piece, and are the easiest, best, and cheapest upgrade you can make to your truck's actual lighting performance. They should be on a banner at the top of this forum for all new comers to see, since so many people are drawn like moths to the flame to the cheap chineseium LED garbage.

I don't know of another forum anywhere on the internet that has anything close to @crashnburn80's level of detail and meticulous testing for replacement lighting for any vehicle. Certainly better and more reliable than any other source of information that you'll find out there specifically for Tacomas, but hey, it's a lot of reading, and most people aren't into that.

 

M going to run them for a while and see how they feel, my truck is lifted up 1 1/2 inches so I lowered them 1 1/2 inches and it was needed. If I get flashed or if MY visibility isn’t good I’ll take them out. No shame if I’m wrong. Also product improve and upgrade at a fast pace now a days, so I can’t be told I’m wrong or that it won’t work just because X person did a test years ago with outdated/discontinued products, not taking away credit to anyone btw, respect. But things change and change to be oem standard. People comment all the time and haven’t even tried out the products so it’s hard to tell who actually knows and who’s just talking because someone that knows some one said it. But like I said I’ll try it out and she how it performs for my visabikty and how it does for other drivers on the road, if it’s not good then out they go but if it works, then it works

 

I, for one, am shocked. Best of luck.

 

While there are technical improvements all the time, there are still the physics of the lighting assemblies that have to be dealt with, and those are not changing. That's why you see purpose designed and built assemblies for halogen and LED and they're not the same. I'm not sure you've read what I've written here and what others have as well trying to explain why what you're doing is not only a bad idea, it's also an unsafe idea.

Unfortunately not being flashed is not an indication of anything at all. It just means you aren't being flashed. I'm also guessing that you have very little experience looking at light and how it works in the context of an effective and safe headlight. It's already been mentioned here about how many of the LED drop-in bulbs over light the foreground. That very thing tricks your eyes into thinking that your new lights are brighter - and they are, but only right in front of the vehicle and that over lighting close to the front of the truck causes your irises to close down to accommodate (much like the aperture in a camera lens) the brighter foreground and thereby diminishing your distance vision, as well, as, y'know, just not having the "throw" down the road for the distance vision.

The LED drop-in bulbs also tend to have more spurious output - more random stray light going every which way, which you probably won't be aware of, but is something that absolutely can affect oncoming drivers - making everyone on the road there less safe than they need to be. And if you cause an accident with these inferior bulbs and your insurance company finds them during an inspection, there's a good chance you might not be covered.

 

Fools never learn. Smart people learn from their own mistakes. Wise men learn from the mistakes of others.

You have been given the benefit of experience from people who have, by their own admittance, done bad things. You have the opportunity to be "wise".

Let us hope you can at least learn from what will soon follow and be "smart".